We are people who live in bodies,
who move in bodies and experience life through senses that are embodied, and Ash
Wednesday is a day to talk about embodied-ness in all its inadequacy. It’s a
day to say “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return” and to mean
it—not only as a potentially depressing reminder of our mortality but also as
the foretaste to a promise. You are dust, but dust chosen by God.
When
we talk about bodies in the church it tends to make people uncomfortable,
because we all have bodily hang-ups. We can all pretend we have the perfect
personality (which we don’t) or the perfect sense of humor (which we don’t),
and we can try to fake having the perfect family (which is fooling nobody), but our bodies? We can’t even fool
ourselves into thinking those are all
that great. Even those among us who might feel they look pretty good, or who
train their body to be an athlete, even they need only wait a year or two, a
decade or two, and it will start to fall apart. Time makes all of our bodies
out for what they really are. You are dust, and to dust you will return. It’s a
promise; even if it’s not a very good one.
So,
on the one hand we’re uncomfortable with our bodies because they aren’t as
great as we could imagine them being, whether you want to be more attractive or
whether you’re just unhealthy and only want to be healthy again. And, on the
other hand, we are also uncomfortable with our bodies because we have a
tremendous capacity toward bodily guilt. When the typical person thinks about
sin they don’t think about it as an orientation away from God. Most people
think of sin as a bodily thing; that they have bodily urges that they should act
on or not act on, that they have feelings that they can’t control. Even if most
of the language of sin that we use in church is about sin in its universal
sense, the way we feel sinful is usually in the core of our bodies—again, one
might say, in our “embodied-ness.”
So
when we come to those last few verses from today’s Gospel, Matthew 18:8-9—“If
your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away; it
is better for you to enter life maimed or lame than to have two hands or two
feet and to be thrown into the eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to
stumble, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to enter life with
one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into the hell of fire”—we read that with the same fear of our
bodies with which we live most of our lives. Most of us are pretty put off by
that scripture; so we assume it’s metaphorical or hyperbolic. Jesus can’t
actually mean what he’s saying, right?
Because
of our bodily hang-ups we miss the point of what Jesus is saying. It’s actually
very straightforward. Jesus is asking, “Where does sin live?” Is it in your
hand or your foot? If so, cut it off and quick! Is if it in your eye? If so,
dig it out. NOW. DO IT! These days Jesus would have to continue (because our
bodily metaphors have changed somewhat) and he might ask, “Does sin live in
your brain?” No? “How about your heart?”
And
this is where we might get led astray, because most of us may say that, yes,
sin lives right there in our heart, but when we say that we don’t actually mean
the beating, blood-pumping organ at the center of our circulatory system. What
we mean is that sin lives at our innermost core. So, Jesus might say, then you
should cut out your innermost core.
And
we’re left, as is so often the case, to say, “God, I can’t do that. I can’t
remove the most central part of me—even if I wanted to.” Yes, that is the
point. You see, if sin lived in the foot or the hand then we should absolutely
be going around cutting off each others’ appendages. I’m not kidding or being
hyperbolic or metaphorical. If cutting off your hand removed sin from your life
you would be better off for it. In fact, if you removed sin from your life,
then you wouldn’t have to die, because sin is the thing that caused our
mortality in the first place. But this is all unimportant because sin doesn’t
live there—not in our hands or feet or eyes; not in any part of our bodies.
You
see, we all have bodily hang-ups, but it’s not our bodies that are sinful. Our
bodies were created by God and God called them “good.” So, when sin entered
into the world it didn’t take the good and make it bad; it took the good and
intertwined it with sin. It took our focus from God and caused us all to curve
in on ourselves. Unfortunately, all of us have read Paul and let his talk of
flesh and spirit cloud our understanding of our bodies. It’s not that our
bodies are sinful; it’s that the fact that we look on our bodies as these
imperfect things is; the fact that we are always trying to make ourselves look
better is; the fact that we run as fast as we can away from the reality that we
are dust—that is sinful. We are dust—dust that was created and called “good.”
Every little thing
we do to try to improve on that dust has made things worse. Life is this great
paradox of running from death only to discover in death that we are made whole.
So today offers us this paradox of running from our mortality only to discover,
as some of you will, that that moment of being reminded that you are dust is a
moment of freedom. You are dust. Good dust. And, in spite of all the hang-ups
you have about your body, that dust is beautiful dust.
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